Michele Simon has been writing and speaking about food politics and food industry marketing and lobbying tactics since 1996.

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Voluntary Self-Regulation

Both the food and alcohol industries are engaged in a massive charade they call voluntary self-regulation. The idea is to convince policymakers and the general public that laws are not needed to restrict marketing to youth or any other form of advertising. Instead, these industries rely on a broken system of voluntary rules that they get to define, monitor, and enforce, or not. Eat Drink Politics has years of experience researching and documenting the failure of advertising self-regulation and can help you with talking points and feasible policy alternatives to this failed non-system.

RECENT BLOG POSTS

The natural products business is booming. By some industry estimates, retail sales topped an eye-popping $100 billion last year, with nearly 60 percent coming from food. No wonder more food marketers are labeling their products — from Pepsi to Cheetos — natural. But what does the term actually mean? Despite the term’s popularity — or [...]

Food and Beverage Marketing: Beyond Compliance Over the past 18 years as a lawyer and public health advocate, I have scrutinized the ways that food companies use misleading or illegal marketing to unfairly influence consumers. I will continue to call out these deceptive practices as long as the industry continues to use them. Fortunately, the [...]

Last week, with an assist from first lady Michelle Obama, the Food and Drug Administration announced a set of proposed improvements — the first in 20 years — to the nutrition facts label found on most food packages. Read rest at Al Jazeera America …

By focusing on marketing, Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign won’t save our children’s health Michelle Obama is probably the most popular first lady in recent memory, with approval ratings embarrassingly higher than her husband’s, at least in 2012. She is the picture of health, speaks openly about the challenges of raising two daughters and feeding [...]

The food lobby wants a voluntary federal approach to GMO labeling, but we should let the states have their way, for now. Those advocating for improvements to our broken food system have, of late, had little to crow about. However, in recent years, a growing movement to label foods made with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) [...]